this is the flood
by Charis M
Summary: 'She's still there, so it's all too clearly not enough.' Athos drinks, and forgets, and - doesn't. [pre-series,canon compliant]
**this is the flood
**

 _Unequivocally Swellie's fault, thanks to an exchange on Tumblr_ _ _(see: swelldame[period]tumblr[period]com[slash]post_ _ _[slash]_ 143404755064 - and why does the Volepit still refuse to let us include links? DX ___)__ around Milady and Athos' tavern chat in S02E08. Set sometime pre-canon_ _; I'm almost tempted to say it's set_ right _before canon and this is the cause of that hangover driving Athos to stick his head in a bucket of ice water in his first scene because it feels appropriate, but it's not fixed._

 _Title by way of Leonard Cohen._

* * *

 _Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory.  
\- Charles Caleb Colton_

(One swallow.)

The wine tastes like piss, but he'd not had enough livres in his pouch to afford better. All that had mattered in the moment was a need to drown, and he'd seized the bottles the few coins he'd fumbled out would buy and retreated to the relative safety of his garret room as quickly as he could. Tonight he doesn't need quality, he -

(Two swallows.)

\- needs to get drunk, needs to blot out the past, because there had been tiny blue flowers in among the posies an urchin had been hawking earlier and the sight had brought it all back, fresh as yesterday, until he could almost hear her delighted laughter, feel her skin beneath his fingertips, smell the sweetness of the meadow around them, and -

(Three swallows.)

\- his hands are shaking but he doesn't spill a drop. In the angle of the late afternoon sun, the wine is a murky shadow within the cloudy glass bottle. He's long since given up on the nicety of pouring it when it only reminds him of blood with how it glows in the light. He should draw the shutters tightly, as much against the headache he's bound to have tomorrow as to give his thoughts more fitting company, but he always forgets until it's too late. This is safer, anyway -

(Four, and the bottle is nearly empty.)

\- not just for what he might see but for how it feels. The Comte de la Fère would never have been so uncouth. His actions underscore a bitter truth: that the comte is just as dead as his comtesse, just as dead as T -

(Five.)

He lets the first bottle fall carelessly to the floor and reaches for the second. The world has taken on a mellow glow, softening at the edges. Like this the memories are warm, but tonight that's dangerous - tonight, when a fragile flower can make him bleed, he's sliding too close to that edge where gold turns to red and -

(Six, seven, eight - half the second gone, and for a moment his head swims.)

\- he remembers only endings and he can't do that tonight, needs absolute oblivion rather than mere forgetfulness -

(Nine. Ten.)

\- and he's fumbling at the third, hands finally steady but fingers rendered clumsy from the drink, and the softness is a haze now, the world seems distant, the sound of his heart in his ears louder than the sound of the cork pulling free, louder than -

Is that a footstep, or his heart thudding against his ribs?

Of course she's in red - a swath of crimson that drapes about her, just as it had the day all her lies had shattered and he'd seen the serpent at his breast. It is fitting, shows the true nature she'd concealed beneath the blues and virginal white she'd favoured during their days as husband and wife, and his lip curls even as his fingers flex, strain not to reach.

(Eleven, and it's enough that the sight of her makes sense. Of all his ghosts and failures, she is the only one unsettled, unshriven, the only one who haunts him in the seeming flesh in moments like this.)

" _Whorespawn_."

It's a hissed accusation, but the nightmare before him merely cocks her head, looks from his hand to the bottles on the floor and back again. "Is that the best you can come up with?"

Rather than reply, he takes another swallow of wine. It is still sharp but less caustic, in case he needed confirmation of how drunk he's become. (Not enough. She's still there, so it's all too clearly not enough. He takes another pull from the bottle, and another. She watches without a word.)

The sun is lower now, the room swimming into shadow - or perhaps that's the wine - and red light. The glow drenches her in blood; she could be a statue, carved from unfeeling stone, pulled from his memories and placed there to taunt him. He breathes in, suddenly desperate for the scent of flowers, but all that is there is acrid wine and the copper tang beneath that never quite seems to leave.

"I killed you." That much he remembers is true, even now - that much, he never quite manages to forget.

Another long look, as anger and sorrow war on her face. "You killed Anne de la Fère," she agrees, "Anne de Breuil, Anne who only wanted you -"

"That woman never was!" he roars, and she (liar, betrayer, _jezebel_ ) flinches as if he'd physically struck her before her face hardens.

"It seems impossible that I thought you different from the others once." She is cold now, cold as ice and dead as his heart, but her eyes burn in a way that makes him shiver, from fear and something else he dares not try to name. The words drive into him. "I learned my lessons well, Athos."

It is his turn to flinch, or would be if the wine hadn't left him lax and boneless as it seeped into his limbs, and when she crouches before him he cannot find the strength to pull away. (And yet he manages to lean into her imagined, remembered warmth all the same, because no matter how much he drinks, no matter how much he denies, a part of him will always yearn for the woman who'd taken his heart, even if she had only ever been a dream and a lie.)

"You disgust me," she whispers, close as a kiss, as her palm curls against his cheek, but she is only a memory and it is only the wine that makes him feel the heat of her skin, of her breath.

He tightens his fingers on the neck of the bottle to keep them from closing around empty air, closes his eyes so he does not have to see her (so he does not have to imagine what is not there, imagine a woman who had never truly been.) "I disgust myself." It is a harsh admission.

(Fifteen swallows.)

When he opens his eyes again, it has grown cold and dark. He is alone. The fourth bottle is still there - open, ready, waiting.

(Sixteen.)

* * *

 _Somehow I never really thought about the possible symbolic weight of Milady as Anne in blue and white until writing this ..._

 _(I swear, I'm still working on the next part(s) of_ Never and Always _. I just keep getting distracted! Find me and prod me about it (or anything else) over on Tumblr as myalchod. XD )  
_


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